By Patrick Hatch

6 September 2018 — 11:55pm

The workplace watchdog believes Domino's Pizza remains riddled with employment law breaches throughout its network, after an almost two-year investigation found most of the stores it audited were breaking the rules.

The Fair Work Ombudsman said it could not determine if Domino's was "knowingly involved (as an accessory)" to the breaches carried out by its franchisees, but put it "on notice" that the introduction of the Protecting Vulnerable Workers act last year meant it could be held liable for future breaches by franchisees.

The watchdog found that underpayment and other breaches were widespread.

Photo: AAP

The ombudsman said it would continue to monitor Domino's with random store checks, and called on the fast-food giant to release its own internal store audits - even though it questioned their credibility.

After launching an investigation into Domino's in late 2016, the ombudsman released its long-awaited findings on Thursday, which revealed workplace breaches at 19 of the 23 stores it fully audited for the month of February 2017.

The breaches - including underpaying or not paying staff for the hours they worked and not keeping proper records - suggested there were widespread issues throughout Domino's 662 Australian stores, the ombudsman said.

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"The results of the FWO audit... strongly suggest broader, ongoing systemic issues within the Domino’s network of stores that are likely to be contributing to promoting or enabling non-compliance throughout the network," report said.

The ombudsman said it found 20 employees had been underpaid about $100 each on average for the one month audited across the 23 stores, with each store owing staff between $118 to $792.

Extrapolated over the Domino's entire network and over a longer period, it was likely that "underpayment of Domino’s employees are both significant and widespread", the ombudsman found.

A total of 33 stores were audited, but after almost two years, the ombudsman said it had still not finished its investigation at 10 stores - all owned by franchisee Pamir Dehsabzi, who was at the centre of Fairfax Media's investigation.

Meanwhile, three out of the five company-operated stores audited were non-compliant, the ombudsman found.

Domino's has said its own internal store audits have recovered $5.75 million for workers in wages and unpaid superannuation.

But the ombudsman questioned the validity of those audits and said it was concerned that the "processes may have relied upon franchisee records without employee corroboration".

"The FWO also calls upon Domino’s to publish the findings of its audit activities so that consumers can be confident Domino’s is complying with the law," the report says.

“The Fair Work Ombudsman will continue to closely monitor Domino’s across its network byresponding to requests for assistance and assessing any intelligence we receive,” said ombudsman Sandra Parker.

The FWO said it would launch another probe into the company within 12 months that will include unannounced site visits to check workers are being paid properly.

Domino’s said the FWO’s findings supported its claim that there were “no systemic issues” across its business, and said the majority of breaches uncovered were administrative errors.

“Since the audit period we have been doing our utmost to ensure team members are paidcorrectly and, if we find deliberate breaches of employment obligations we will take firm action,” said Domino’s Australia CEO Nick Knight.

“We will continue to work hard with our franchisees and employees as we strive to achieve a 100 per cent compliance rate.”